


Strawberry Festival

by JanineMNM



Category: Odd Thomas Series - Dean Koontz
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 14:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1350820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanineMNM/pseuds/JanineMNM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The strawberry festival comes once a year to St. Bartholomew's Church of Pico Mundo, bringing a ghost, a ribald fairground organ, and--one time--Pearl Sugars in her latest fast car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strawberry Festival

**Author's Note:**

> Odd is one of my all-time favorites, and Rosalia Sanchez's mention of Pearl Sugar's left hook at the strawberry festival has always intrigued me. There's no indication in Odd Thomas that Odd witnessed it, but this being fan fiction, I've taken a few liberties while otherwise trying to stay true to canon.
> 
> In this story, Odd is sixteen years-old at the end of his sophomore year in school. Granny will die in a few months, and so Odd has not written his award-winning essay and made friends with Little Ozzie. He's just started working for Terry at the Pico Mundo Grille, but already knows the Chief well through his encounters with ghosts. He and Stormy are not a couple yet.
> 
> The story is told retrospectively, after the events of Odd Thomas.
> 
> Disclaimer: The Odd Thomas series belongs to Dean Koontz; I'm not profiting from this story other than by having fun with his characters.

When I was sixteen, Granny Sugars rumbled into town in a 1970 Chevelle on the same day St. Bartholomew's church wheeled its fairground organ out of storage for the annual strawberry festival. Enrique Delgado and I were beginning our standard tune-up of the musical instrument when Granny first cruised by, waving and showing off her new wheels.

"Odd!" she called from her open window.

She came to a rolling stop alongside the church and then screeched back to life as she headed to the far side of the cemetery. Under the Mojave sun, the pale green finish of the car flashed silver. Flaring and sparkling in the distance through the filter of two stalwart live oaks, she disappeared from view altogether as she turned at the northwest corner.

Out of sight, but not out of earshot.

Next to me, Enrique Delgado seemed untroubled by the racket Granny's beast stirred in the comfortably warm streets of Pico Mundo. The rest of us had reason to pause and consider, to locate the nearest shady overhang just in case. But not Enrique. To him, it mattered little if the Mojave dragon awoke, grumpy and raring to re-claim his territory. He likely had other things on his mind as he circled the silent instrument: luscious roses, gilded moldings, chubby cherubs, and blinking light bulbs. He inspected these details from every angle, pausing every few steps to lean in and mutter to himself.

I took a break as I followed the guttural sound of Granny's travels. She came back into view as she turned onto the street behind us, finally sidling her muscle-bound car to the curb.

"She runs out strong, wouldn't you say?" she asked.

"She's a beaut."

Granny grinned with devilish, pent-up energy finally released. "All original." She rubbed the green vinyl dash, smooth and clean, like she was giving a loyal dog a scratch behind the ears. "Except the A/C, of course. And I hope you'll help me put in a new stereo."

"Sure. I could figure something out." My experience with automobile mechanics was spotty and based on need—like knowing how to hot-wire a car—but I was convinced that a good manual and a mind for tinkering would allow me to get the job done.

"BFGoodrich tires." I stepped back to have another look.

"Cragar SS chrome wheels," she added. "And under the hood, a 454 big block. With the LS6 option. I'll take you for a spin later, son, but for now, I've come to answer to God."

"Vegas was good, then?"

"Vegas?" She flicked one of her slim wrists like a delicate dancer. It was true that Pearl Sugars had danced her way across many floors, but assuming her fragile was a severe miscalculation that she had probably used in her favor on more than one occasion. "Too many distractions in Vegas. Fun, yes, but unnecessary. The gambling circuit goes well beyond Vegas, of course." She raised her chin in a way that allowed her to look down at me. "My offer still stands to take you out with me. Teach you the ropes."

"Thank you, I know." She had invited me to join her on her most recent jaunt, when she'd heard I'd taken a job at the Pico Mundo Grille under the auspices of its owner Terry Stambaugh.

"Those kinds of connections don't come easily," she said.

"I'm sure they don't."

"Connections I wouldn't share with simply anyone."

"It would be an honor…"

"But you haven't changed your mind, have you?"

"No, ma'am."

She paused for a moment, as though considering her next approach. Granny understood nothing of the difficulties I thought I'd face outside of the ordered life I'd begun creating for myself. My own naiveté would become plain only a few years later, when I'd witness the shattering of all pretenses of safety. Pico Mundo was not a sheltered small town as much as it was a sampling of the world at large, with all of its evils. But I'm getting ahead of myself in the story here.

"I like a challenge," Granny said.

"Then consider me at your service."

She laughed, her smile folding into the years of mirth etched on her face. "I like you, Odd." She reached for her handbag, opened the door, and stood next to me with her arm wrapped around my shoulder—her version of a hug. She smelled of Lily of the Valley-scented talcum powder. "Walk with me and we'll talk. I think I'm signed up for biscuit duty."

"High praise," I said. "Rosalia hasn't let anyone near the biscuit dough since Melinda Roosevelt got too twisty with it."

A twisting action with the cutter inhibits the biscuit dough from rising to its lightest, flakiest possibility. I doubted biscuits would ever be my specialty and had the fullest respect for anyone who could master them.

Her eyes narrowed. "You been learning?"

"No, ma'am. I'm strictly on the griddle. Pancakes..."

"What was the name of that woman I met from Louisiana? She made the best biscuits ever. Back in the late eighties, right before the riverboat casinos." She gave up trying to remember when I stopped on the sidewalk.

"I have to stay here on organ duty today. Soon time to get her cranked up."

"I'll see you later," she said. "Come join me for a sundae when it quiets down." She turned toward the church, glancing one more time at the organ, just as Chief Porter pulled onto the street and stopped opposite us.

"Ms. Sugars, Odd." He made the gesture of tipping his hat to her. "Welcome back to town."

"Chief." She nodded."I hope you'll come by later for ice cream or a slice of pie."

"Oh, I'd love to, thank you, so long as I'm not kept busy all day with reports of a light green vehicle tearing it up around town."

"Sounds dangerous!"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Thank goodness it's quiet now."

"Remarkably so," Chief answered.

"Well, good! We have some hope that we'll see you later. I'm afraid I'm running late. My regards to Mrs. Porter." Granny took a couple of bouncing steps, light on her feet as she started toward the church, humming How Great Thou Art by the time she reached the entrance.

Chief shook his head. "What's she got under the hood?"

"A 454 big block. A V8."

Chief's jowly, hangdog expression barely shifted. "When reports of a high speed vehicle led me straight here, I thought for sure my trouble had found you again."

He had good cause to wonder, since on more than one occasion I had acted as a magnet for various and sundry criminals of Pico Mundo. Today, though, my attention was pulled to the ghost of Enrique Delgado, who was in danger of being bound to his fairground organ forever if I couldn't figure out how to help him let go and move on to his next phase. I won't presume that you've heard about my unusual existence. For anyone who's interested, I've detailed it elsewhere, under the direction of Little Ozzie, the famous six-fingered, four hundred-pound author.

The short of it is this: I can see ghosts. And I do something about it.

"I'm here for the day." I pointed at the organ. Mr. Delgado was still circling it, unfazed by conversations that took my attention away from him. He was in no hurry to go anywhere. Chief, the only person at that time who knew about my supernatural propensities, had enough imagination to understand I wasn't simply here to run a fairground organ, and enough tact not to say anything like, "There's a ghost here right now!"

"You having a busy morning?" I asked.

He shrugged. "We had a bank robbery. Unarmed. The guy made off with just under a grand. Actually stopped on his way out the door to grab some lollipops."

"Killer sweet tooth."

Chief's eyebrows rose. "It was nearly his downfall. As he was picking through the bowl—blue was his favorite—one of the bank customers swung a bag of pennies at him and chased him out."

"Sir, pennies?"

"Odd, pennies are surprisingly heavy. Did you know fifty dollars is 31 pounds of pennies?"

"I did not."

"The lady didn't have thirty-one pounds of pennies, but she got a good enough swing going with weight behind it." He chuckled. "She had the pennies stowed in a sock, if you can imagine that. Said she had one just like it in dimes at home, but that that one wasn't nearly as full."

"I could go for the obvious here, that she was socking money away."

"I know it. Until today, I thought it was just an expression." He seemed to be contemplating that idea for a moment. "Well… since Pearl Sugars isn't my guy…" He nodded lazily at Granny's new wheels. "No ball game today?"

"Away game."

"All right. I'll see you later if you're still here."

I waved him off. And that left just Enrique and me. Enrique looked at me expectantly, because that's how ghosts tend to react to me. I don't blame them for it. I'm the only one in their world who sees them, which isn't something I'm bragging about; on many days, I question my own capacity to serve them.

When Enrique had been alive, he'd been a regular, but inconspicuous figure at the church. Granny mentioned that he'd brought a woman friend around from time to time who'd worked with him at the electric company. I'd found a newspaper photo of him helping to hand out energy-saving tip sheets at a Community Action Day. Otherwise, the only other report of him was his obituary, when he'd died at the age of 57 from natural causes.

There were no obvious signs on Enrique that indicated otherwise. No bruises, strangulation marks, or bullet holes marked an untimely demise. In death, he comported himself with the same quiet, unassuming personal pride he had when he was living. He always dressed in a neat polo shirt, top button left open; black jeans with ironed creases, and shiny loafers. Against the dry, dusty pavement, they fluoresced like diamonds in the sun.

Enrique never had much to "say" in the way that the dead communicate, presenting only on the day of the strawberry festival, when he'd appear in my bedroom, impatient to get on with the proceedings. He rarely gestured or mouthed any words or attempted to lead me anywhere but to the church. As soon as the fairground organ was in place outside the church, he began pacing, always with his bland expression. I seemed unable to prompt any other reaction, for better or for worse. Once he pointed at a mallet-wielding, smiling cherub whose elbow joint had gotten stuck, its drumbeat a half step behind the cymbals. I'd proceeded with a can of WD-40, since it seemed like a reasonable fix and didn't elicit a look of horror from Enrique. To be honest, though, he looked the same when I'd held up a roll of duct tape.

"I'm sorry, sir, if I'm missing anything," I said on more than one occasion. I'd have given up, but for the fact that it's not in my nature to do so.

Enrique, too, didn't seem to be going anywhere, indication enough that he needed something here. When he'd still been alive and first offered to contribute his instrument to the festival—park it outside the event to attract attention—he'd been met with quiet, polite acceptance. At that time, before they'd heard it play, no one had realized how loud it was.

A fairground organ is meant to be loud, calling the throngs above the din and clatter of amusement machinery. Here in our quiet desert town, Enrique's music carried to every sulking, parched corner. People came from all over to discover its source, seeking out the carousel and staying to have biscuits and jam, ice cream sundaes, or a wedge of pie.

On that first year Enrique had run his organ, the ladies of St. Bartholomew broke records, well-surpassing eight thousand dollars. I can only imagine how they'd celebrated, jubilant but exhausted. With their feet propped up on scattered folding chairs in the basement hall, they'd discussed new hymnals, repairs to the rectory, or a new industrial stove for the kitchen.

Quiet, likeable Enrique had become a star, a celebrity DJ from another era, albeit for only one day of the year. His songs came in boxes, full of long, accordion-folded strips of cardboard punched with holes. When he'd died, all of them must have been tossed away as meaningless trash by unknowing church volunteers. The only remaining one was left behind in the instrument, his last song before his death.

The can-can.

Over and over the song played. My job, once the cardboard strip had reached its end, was to flip the accordion-folded book and re-feed it through the key frame. Remarkably, no one ever complained about the repeating can-can, so popular the festival had become. The people of Pico Mundo loved their strawberries, sweetened and accessorized with rich cream and layers of pastry by the talented cooks of St. Bartholomew.

Also, in recent years, the instrument had gotten a boost from Little Ozzie. His beloved bulimic detective once stole behind an organ at the county fair after she'd eaten three orders of fried dough, her retching masked by deafening pipes, cymbals, and snares. When she'd straightened, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin, she'd found a clue stashed in its inner workings that had unlocked her case.

I hope I haven't offended you be relaying this part of the story and mean no disrespect; only Little Ozzie can tell it well. I've promised him I would include these details only because of their relevance to this story: everyone clamored to know whether his detective's organ in Fair Game was the very same one that had belonged to Mr. Delgado. Little Ozzie remained evasive, joking that any resemblance of objects in his best-selling series to living objects was purely coincidental, which in effect sealed its fate among townspeople as the genuine article. Thus, while Enrique Delgado slipped into obscurity, his instrument and its annual can- can-palooza achieved fame.

As for myself, I admit that I, too, remained under the influence of Little Ozzie's detective, convinced that the missing clue, the one that would allow Enrique to move on, lay buried somewhere in the churning cogs, in a part I had yet to discover. I had my head behind the machine during a break in the music when the girl showed up behind me.

"You take requests?"

I don't frighten easily, not since I often encounter ghosts whose human existence ended in gruesome ways. Perhaps more frightening to me are guns and the people who wield them. And I admit to having soiled my drawers on a bad day when I found myself dangling over a churning industrial-sized dough hook, about to be made into pasta. But this familiar female voice asking if I took requests scared me in a hormone-fueled way that made my palms sweat and my heart pound.

I ducked out of the machine, taking care not to bump my head like a bumbling fool. I _did_ know her. She was the sultry-but-cute girl from second period math class. The dark-haired beauty named Bronwen who went by the nickname Stormy.

Luckily, I recover quickly, too. "If rollicking, high-kicking French dance hall numbers is your thing, yes I do take requests."

"I'd like to hear the can-can," she said without the hint of a smile. She settled on the ledge near the basement entrance.

"Coming right up."

The music, which had reached its end a few minutes earlier, needed to be flipped and restarted. Though the process was simple, I was facing what my friend at the radio station would call dead air, which I stupidly felt the need to fill. "Here's something interesting… in the late 1800s, a man was brought in on a nuisance charge for playing Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey all day long."

"What a rebel."

"He must have gotten distracted selling tickets." I started to explain how the ends of his cardboard book must have been connected together, which allowed for continuous play, when I guessed from her expression that I was talking too much.

I went back to fitting the cardboard into the frame.

But Stormy wasn't finished with the topic. "It was like an early eight-track."

"Yeah, you could say that."

"But yours isn't?" "No. It's just a stack."

She laughed. "Is it always about pancakes with you?"

I admit her knowledge of my activities outside of school, of which I'd told her nothing, may have puffed my male ego. Mind you, I'm generally happy to cultivate a non-celebrity status, but when the most beautiful girl in school paid attention… Maybe I let my interest show too much on my face. She'd caught me glancing at her one time in class and had shot me a glare cold enough to make cactus paddle popsicles in the Mojave sun. A look I'd never wanted to cause again.

Sensing a returning chill, I said, "I could loop it, I suppose. Maybe all it would take would be a piece of cellophane tape. And then all day long, we'd have the can-can-can-can…"

Enrique seemed untroubled by the tape suggestion, but at this point he stopped his pacing and made a rare attempt to communicate with me. He rolled his eyes.

"Let's hear it, Rebel Boy," Stormy said.

"Rebel Boy?"

I'm not completely immune to wounds to my pride. The taunts of unimaginative playground bullies who made use of my unusual name were nothing but a footnote in the list of my childhood grievances. But the withering comments of this particular beautiful woman, I wouldn't take without a fight. "That's less ironic than you know."

She wrinkled her cute nose. "Who said I was being ironic?"

"1800s. Nonstop Bill Bailey. Rebel."

"Oh, well, then, I was being ironic."

"But not now."

"Nope. Anyone who would stand out in front of a church playing the can-can all day for a strawberry festival? Rebel to the core."

"All right. Just so we're clear on that. I'll play your request now."

The song began in earnest, blasting all of Pico Mundo. Stormy cocked her head as she listened, a pose I found so attractive that I had to imagine frozen cactus paddles, covered with spines, whacking me all over my body. Behind the organ, where we were stationed, the volume was slightly reduced, but still too loud to allow any meaningful conversation. She stayed for one round of can-can, and then stood to go.

"Strawberries?"

"Later," she said. "I like to wait."

"They ran out of biscuits one year."

"I'll take my chances. And anyway, I'm an ice cream type of girl."

I expected she'd head off into the streets of Pico Mundo, but instead she walked around the church, in the direction of the rectory. After a few minutes of silence, I fired up the can-can. Again.

Enrique and I spent the afternoon together without any revelations. Chief stopped to have a piece of pie and chat. Mrs. Porter was out for the day, so he was going home to an empty house. He had a possible ID on the morning's bank robber, an ex-resident of Pico Mundo named Beau MacIntyre who was suspected in a rash of small-town bank heists and likely had substantial gambling debts to repay.

"I'll see you at the Grille tomorrow morning," he promised as he drove off.

It was, as they say, the calm before the storm.

Ghosts are generally harmless entities, comporting themselves in a demeanor befitting the solemnity of their deaths. Many are capable, however, of getting in touch with their more dangerous side. And though they can't directly cause physical harm to humans, if sufficiently angered, they can exert a lot of force on surrounding objects. One time I enraged Andy Kaufman at the grocery store by catching sight of him in the produce aisle. So furious he was at being found out as actually dead, he'd tried to wrestle me, without any effect. If he'd have discovered the power to hurl melons, we would have had a real fruit salad disaster at the Safeway.

Enrique Delgado had spent several years walking circles around his fairground organ, unable to say what had been on his mind. In other words, he had a lot of pent-up energy with no way to release it. Perhaps the loud-mouthed man who showed up late in the day was exactly what Enrique had been waiting for all along.

"You!" The man pointed at me with the blue lollipop he pulled out of his mouth. A string of spittle clung to his lips. "You're not…Where's the other guy? Paco, Jose, Juan..." Stumbling into the church, he continued to spew a collection of racist, homophobic putdowns. He passed by quickly, but packed a lot of concentrated scorn in a short space. Enough to stir the ire of a mild-mannered ghost.

Enrique cracked his poltergeist knuckles: at his behest, the fairground organ let out a crunching noise.As fate would have it, at the same time, Stormy returned, finally ready to enjoy her strawberry sundae to go.

One of the cherubs began beating his snare drum madly. Stormy's eyes widened.

"You might not want to be here for this," I said.

"That sounds suspiciously paternalistic."

"Then I won't warn you that you could be maimed by flying cherub limbs."

"Cool." She set her bowl aside.

"Also, I won't point out the obvious that your ice cream's going to melt."

"That's okay." She folded her arms around her knees, as though settling in. "Ice cream is meant to be enjoyed without distraction."

The organ moaned. "Something's jammed," I tried to explain, just as Enrique managed to dislodge one of the pipes, bending it forward. Stormy didn't take her eyes off it.

Enrique screwed his face and waved his arms, only beginning to discover his musical talents; the organ whined and lurched forward, as though its gear stick had down-shifted at top speeds on the highway. I worried it wouldn't take long before someone would notice the absence of the can-can and come out to accuse me of playing devil music. And then there was the other problem of Beau MacIntyre inside the church hall.

I got on the phone to call Chief. "I think we have your bank robber here at the strawberry festival. From the smell of him, I'd say he spent his day drinking his earnings."

"What is that racket?"

"It's not the can-can anymore, sir."

"I should come myself, shouldn't I?"

"Probably best. And soon." I ducked as a hunk of rose petal whizzed by my ear.

The cardboard book had jammed, mangled and torn, but Enrique's opus raged on. As he waved his arms above his head, he generated sounds that could have come from the bowels of the earth. Ugly and brutal, there was nothing musical about it.

"Sir, I'm generally in favor of self-expression, but you don't want to go down this path. After a certain point, it gets harder and harder to turn back. The anger, it'll feed on itself. Innocent people could get hurt." I said this as quietly as I could, knowing Stormy was watching, agog.

Enrique looked straight at me and flexed his arms. The organ made a noise best described in polite company as breaking wind.

"That man is an idiot," I said. "A lowlife. And from what I know about you, this isn't how you lived your life, sir, stewing in hatred."

At best, it was a very inept Yoda routine, urging Luke not to give in to the dark side. Fortunately for both of us, he was tiring. The organ emitted another hiss. Unable to sustain himself for now, Enrique still needed more of the fuel that would ignite his anger. Beau MacIntyre. Inside the church hall. We both realized it at the same time.

"Oh, no. Not in there," I tried foolishly. But Enrique was gone in an instant.

"Flying Fiddlesticks," I said, taking the steps three at a time.

"And drumsticks," Stormy said, kicking at the wooden mallet that had fallen at her feet.

Inside the church hall, someone had served Beau a piece of strawberry pie with whipped cream before they'd realized their guest had so much hatred to spread. Loud and belligerent, he went on a diatribe about how liberals were wrecking the country by letting in all of the homosexual, sick, poor immigrants. He shared a few crude descriptions of the fairground organ, too.

I won't go into any more details; no person spouting such ugliness and intolerance deserves the attention. Judging from the rage crossing Enrique's face, I guessed even in his quiet life, he'd encountered many people just like Beau. Sometimes, you can't fly low enough to get under the radar.

The rest of the hall was stunned silent. If I had to guess, they were only beginning to register two key points. One, that a despicable man had ruptured the sanctuary of their space, their wholesome family goodness. Though Pico Mundo would later suffer from unfathomable horror, they were, at this point, not yet numb to relatively minor interruptions of peace. And two, here was a stranger attempting to slur a quiet, but well-liked member of their community.

Stray utensils on the tables started to twitch. I hadn't yet been flicked in the forehead by a flipped fork (another poltergeist, even more dangerous, that I would later meet), but I could well imagine the peril of a roomful of flying flatware. Someone was going to have an eye poked out.

The source of Enrique's anger needed to be… neutralized. At that moment, Granny Sugars approached me from behind as she exited the kitchen. "Listen to me. You let me handle this. Good for nothing…"

For as much as I'm compelled to act under certain circumstances, Granny Sugars held the trump card at that moment, even as she approached the vile man named Beau. In my own defense, the events that followed happened very quickly.

And I had cutlery to consider.

"I'll take another piece of pie," Beau MacIntyre said without even glancing at Granny.

"You're all done here."

Beau looked up, a dawning of recognition crossing his face. "You," he laughed. "I know you."

"Get out now," she said with warning clear in her voice.

He laughed again and stood. "I'm not ready to leave." He leaned toward her. "What are you gonna do about it?"

Granny took that as an invitation to show Beau MacIntyre her specific intentions: as forks and spoons trembled, she kicked him in the most sensitive place on the male body. It was a solid, direct hit, one that had every man in that room wincing. Beau doubled in half, as pliable and limp as a cord of soft pretzel dough.

As he started to straighten, staggering forward, rage purple on his face, she jabbed him with a less powerful punch that grazed his collar bone. It distracted him from her set up for her left hook. She twisted, gathered energy from her lithe torso, and swung with whole-body power. The punch socked him squarely on his jaw.

He went down.

Lights out.

Even the forks and spoons went quiet.

Rosalia Sanchez spoke first. "Nice one, Ms. Sugars," she said. "He got exactly what was coming to him."

Enrique agreed. He started to fade. I nodded and gave him two discrete thumbs up. He wasn't happy—there was no cause for rejoicing—but his shirt had returned to its tucked-in position, and even his loafers seemed to shine again. And then he vanished. For good.

Beau left the church on a gurney, headed for the hospital. Chief, after he'd gotten his statements from Granny and other witnesses in the church hall, snagged me for a quiet moment in the sacristy. "He's our guy," he confirmed. "We think he targeted five small-town banks within about a fifty-mile radius. Thought he could be a big fish in a small pond, I guess."

"There's no pond small enough for him, sir," I said.

Chief seemed to consider, pausing for a moment before continuing. "He got his comeuppance today. Your granny's left hook is an instant legend. Would have liked to have seen it myself. Folks say Beau took the first swing."

"Yes sir, he got what was coming to him." I've never been a subscriber to the turn-the-other-cheek philosophy.

"You know I have to ask about the state of the can-can player. That girl Bronwen, she's Father Llewellyn's niece. She isn't saying much."

"No, sir. And she's right. She didn't see the person who wrecked it."

"That's what I thought."

"But everything's all set now."

Chief shifted his belt with its holstered gun under his belly. "All right, then. Not too many messes to clean up on this one. No one else was milling around outside near the organ when it was… destroyed. Might as well have another piece of pie before I leave. You want anything?"

I shook my head. "No thanks. I have some work to do outside."

Stormy was waiting on the stone ledge when I returned with two trash barrels. "That was something." She nodded at the wreckage. "You got a little…" She pointed at my brow with her spoon.

"Whipped cream, probably." I accepted a napkin from her, which saved me from using the back of my hand. I sat next to her. "How was the sundae?"

She gazed toward the cemetery through her thick fringe of lashes. "The strawberries were delicious."

"Worth the wait?"

"You _are_ an Odd One," she said, ignoring my question.

"Guilty as charged."

"One day soon you'll tell me all about it." She turned to me with her dark eyes, wide-open and steady.

Whatever the details of Enrique Delgado's personal life had been—I made no assumptions based on Beau MacIntyre's report—they'd been his own to share or keep to himself. Perhaps in death he'd decided he'd had more to say, but of course couldn't, save for his fairground organ with its same old song. When the foul-mouthed, despicable Beau MacIntyre had spoken for him, Enrique had lit on a way to say his piece. Or rather, to play his piece. He could have gotten mired in anger for a long time to come, or worse, hurt one of the living. All of us at that strawberry festival had Team Sugars-Sanchez to thank.

But of course, at that moment, Stormy wanted to know exactly how the can-can playing fairground organ had gotten shredded, right before her eyes. You'd be surprised by how many people ignore or excuse occurrences outside of the everyday realm and turn instead to the comforts of the things they know—like big-box stores, clichéd television programs, and chain restaurants.

"Well?" she prodded.

I had a messy cleanup to consider, organ parts all around us. On the ledge, next to Stormy's hand, lay a chunk of cherub cheek, the curve and plumpness of it still suggesting a smile. I stretched to pick up a cymbal bent like a taco.

"Maybe one day I will."


End file.
